A believer, not actively engaged in battling the distracted life: will slowly become amused, carried along, floating with the current of the world, and going away from God.
This doesn’t mean that a believer immediately goes against God; rather, it is a slow process of the Lord having less and less influence over the priorities of life.
Canoe trip growing up
Colossians 3:1-2 If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. 2 Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.
ARE YOU FLOATING DOWNSTREAM?
Growing up was the annual LLBC canoe trip. We met at the church, rode the bus to the river, and rode the canoe bus upstream. We were issued a canoe and off we went. Rarely paddling, we merrily splashed along, climbing in and out of the canoe, which the current inexorably pushed downstream.
That is life!
Hungering for God is our study because we all need to ask ourselves an honest question. By doing a personal inventory we can see whether we are paddling against the current of our culture or just floating along with the flow of everyone around us in life.
When I was a little boy at the Lake Lansing Baptist Church, every summer we went to the Red Cedar River. Our whole church went. We parked in this parking lot, all of us got on these old school buses, and the buses wove along, and bounced along, and drove us to some riverbank spot. Behind these buses where these big trailers of canoes, and this is before they had life preservers and all that, we just all piled into those canoes as a church and got our paddle. We spent so much time canoeing down the Red Cedar River for the next many hours of the afternoon.
Now, what’s interesting is, I don’t ever remember using the paddle, in fact, for paddling. I would be splashing people with my paddle. I was out of my canoe as much as I was in the canoe. But what is strange is that imperceptible to everybody was the fact that the canoes were always moving. You see what the canoe company did is, they hauled us upstream, dumped us off on the riverbank. All a hundred of us in our church canoe trip had our little canoe and we were connected to it all day long, following it. It was a very shallow river, but it had a current, and if we didn’t hold that canoe or get into it and paddle that canoe, it just was headed toward where the buses and the trailers were waiting to pick us up. Do you see the current of the river was flowing in this direction? You and I were born into a river flowing away from God. If we live a distracted life, we will constantly float against the Lord, away from Him, with the world. Overcoming the distracted life is like putting your paddle into the river and starting to paddle. Did you know? It was hard. When I got older, I went on these canoe trips a lot. One time, just to be fun, I just started paddling upstream. Did you know that disoriented everyone? Even in the church canoe trip, everyone was going that direction. They said, Johnny, where are you going? We’re all going that way. Where are you going? That was a vivid reminder to me of what’s going on in our lives.
Look at the next slide, because I want to ask you a question. If you’re not canoeing, paddling, going God’s way, look what the slides says. God becomes weightless in your life. Let’s turn to see the verse that’s there. If you’re in Colossians, go to 1 Timothy. That’s our next scripture, chapter 4 and verse 7. Here’s what the apostle Paul says, “but reject profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise yourself toward godliness.” What’s that? Start paddling against the river of the world.
From WOLFL-2024-08 – Beware – Distraction Is The Ultimate Temptation (240418AM) – https://youtu.be/XAMFs2MCW3w
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